A Fresh Perspective on Cybersecurity.

Cybersecurity needs to evolve in order to keep up with the changing landscape of threats. It's time for cyber-apathy to end.

The world is filled with sensory cues of sights and sounds that trigger us to react. On the other hand, the digital world often leads us blind and deaf. Bits and bytes travel across the globe in milliseconds, silently taking action to benefit our lives and businesses. However, wouldn’t it be scary if many of those bits and bytes were unfriendly?

Imagine a scenario where the digital world could be seen, heard, and felt. What if loud explosions instantly sounded whenever cyber-attacks were in progress? With the current pace of malicious activity, it would feel like a war zone. Is this what it would take to finally awaken us from the current state of cyber-apathy? Would we finally become more concerned about the source of these cyber-attacks, and seek solutions to the constant disturbances?

This seemingly far-fetched scenario, where digital actions result in physical disturbances is rapidly materializing. A mass power outage that affected 1.4 million people in Ukraine on December 23, 2015, showcases how the digital world can affect the “real" world in significant ways. Ukraine’s state security service blames the power outage on state-sponsored hackers executing a multi-pronged cyber-attack. This event is significant, since it is the first known mass power outage attributed to hackers. It should surely serve as a serious warning to all of us on what to expect in the near future.

Our always-on internet connections and devices bridge the divide between our physical and digital worlds. We picture these connections as one-way paths that help us in our day-to-day activities. Realistically, these paths are two-way and allow unknown outsiders to potentially do us harm. The exponential growth of internet-enabled everything and our reliance on all of it has complicated the situation even further. It’s no wonder why cybersecurity is so challenging!

So how do we successfully fend against a digital intruder’s chaos? Plenty of strong work is being done in cybersecurity, but the constant stream of spectacular hacks and data breach headlines makes one question whether we’re falling behind in the fight. The formula to address cybersecurity needs to evolve.

At Liongard, we're building a catalyst for this evolution, and at the heart of our solution are three key tenets:

Redefine the Perimeter - Re-envision our highly distributed technology environment with a simple categorization scheme. Simplicity creates clarity which allows us to explore all attack vectors and not get caught in the details.

Visualize Threats - Cybersecurity voodoo needs to be unveiled to educate us on truly effective security choices. Common and repetitive attack paths used to victimize us need to be visualized so they can be blocked.

Design for Defense - Integrate the concept of secure architecture to eliminate whole categories of exposures, rather than running an endless treadmill of small security fixes.